by Paul Sussman
'We have all the equipment ready?' asked Squires.
'You don't have to worry about my end. As far as Jemal goes, I've no idea. The man's a fucking clown.'
'Jemal will do what's expected of him, just as we all will.'
The American pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. 'This isn't going to be easy,' he said, sniffing. 'Sayf al-Tha'r's going to have a lot of men protecting that army.'
'Nonetheless I feel confident that we will succeed. You'll inform your people in the States?'
Massey nodded, a series of chins sinking into one another like an elaborately layered cream cake.
'Good,' said Squires. 'Then it looks like we're on our way.'
The limousine jolted forward another few feet.
'Or we will be if we ever get out of this blessed traffic jam.' He leaned forward towards the driver. 'What on earth's going on up there?'
'There's a lorry jackknifed across the road,' came the reply.
With a sigh Squires removed a sweet from his pocket and began picking at the wrapper, gazing absent-mindedly at the Peugeot in the next lane.
The obvious route for Khalifa to have taken, and the most direct, would have been to go south-west to Bahariya Oasis and then west across the desert from there.
He decided against it. Whoever had been tailing him the previous night would know by now that he'd given them the slip, and also probably that he'd been on the ten p.m. train to Cairo. It wouldn't take a genius to work out he was heading into the desert, in which case there was a good chance they'd try to intercept him en route. And the route they'd be expecting him to take was the quickest one available.
Rather than heading south-west, therefore, he decided instead to go in almost the opposite direction, north-west to Alexandria, picking up the coastal highway to Marsa Matruh and then turning south to the oasis at Siwa. Although longer, this route had clear advantages. The roads were in better condition; he would have less open desert to cross from Siwa than from Bahariya; and, most important, it was the last route his pursuers would think of him taking. Having filled up with petrol, therefore, he headed out of Cairo and onto Highway 11, up towards the Mediterranean coast.
He drove fast, chain-smoking, the landscape around him switching from desert to cultivation and back again. There was a cassette player built into the dashboard, but he could find only one tape – Kazim al-Saher's My Love and the Rain – and after playing it through four times he ejected it again and drove on in silence.
He reached Alexandria in two hours and Marsa in five, stopping only twice en route, once to fill up with petrol and once, just beyond Alexandria, to look at the sea – the first time in his life he had ever seen it.
From Marsa, having again filled up with petrol, he continued west for a further twenty kilometres before turning south onto the Siwa road, an empty ribbon of tarmac stretching away across the desert. The sun was dropping now and he pushed his foot right to the floor. The odd ruined building flashed past and a line of rusting signs marked the course of a buried pipeline. Otherwise there was nothing, just a forlorn expanse of flat orange gravel broken here and there by distant ridges and escarpments. He passed no other traffic and no other signs of life, save an occasional herd of dromedaries nibbling at the desert scrub, their coats brown and shaggy.
Halfway to Siwa he came across a roadside cafe – a makeshift shack optimistically styling itself the Alexander Restaurant – and stopped briefly for some tea before moving on again. Night fell and the desert melted into darkness. Every now and then he glimpsed lights way out across the flats, a settlement, perhaps, or an army camp and, once, a flickering tongue of flame from a gas well. Otherwise he was alone in the void. He put Kazim al-Saher back on.
Finally, around seven p.m., he sensed the flatness around him starting to break up. Vague hills loomed, and peaks and scarps. The road started to descend, snaking through a mess of crags and ridges before the land suddenly opened up and there, below and in front of him, was a carpet of twinkling lights, like tiny boats on a still sea. Siwa Oasis. He slowed momentarily, admiring the sight, and then continued down.
He'd been driving for nine hours and was just finishing his second packet of cigarettes.
38
THE WESTERN DESERT
The man seemed to materialize out of nowhere, as if he had formed from the darkness itself. One moment Tara and Daniel were sitting in each other's arms gazing at the flickering flame of the kerosene lamp, the next they looked up and there he was, standing just inside the tent entrance, his head and face swathed in shadows. He motioned to the guard, no more than a flick of his finger, and immediately the man came to his feet and left.
'Sayf al-Tha'r, I presume,' said Daniel.
The man said nothing, just stared at them. There was a long silence.
'Why have you come here?' asked Daniel eventually. 'To look at us before you kill us? To gloat?' He nodded towards Tara's bruised face and ripped shirt. 'Well, gloat away. I'm sure Allah's very proud of you.'
'Do not speak the name of Allah,' said the man, taking a step forward, his voice quiet but steely, his English good. 'You are not worthy.'
He stared down at Tara, taking in her swollen cheek and the burn marks on her neck, chest and arm. A barely perceptible grimace pulled at his lips. 'Dravic did this?'
She nodded.
'It will not happen again. It was . . . unfortunate.'
'No,' said Daniel quietly. 'It was expected. It's what people like you and Dravic do.'
Again, the man grimaced almost imperceptibly. 'Do not place me and Dravic in the same bracket, Dr Lacage. He is a tool, no more. I serve a higher master.'
Daniel shook his head wearily. 'You people make me laugh. You butcher women and children and somehow convince yourselves it's all for the good of Allah.'
'I told you not to speak his name.' The man's voice was sharp now. 'Your mouth pollutes it.'
'No,' said Daniel, looking up at him, meeting his eyes. 'You pollute it. You pollute it every time you use it to justify the things you do. Do you really think Allah expects—'
The assault was so sudden, and so swift, that the man had his hand around Daniel's throat before either of them was even aware he'd moved. He lifted him to his feet, fingers tight around his windpipe. Daniel struggled, but could not break the grip.
'Stop it!' cried Tara. 'Please, stop it!'
Sayf al-Tha'r ignored her. 'You are all the same, you Westerners,' he growled. 'Your hypocrisy is extraordinary. Every day a hundred children die in Iraq because of the sanctions your governments have imposed and yet you have the audacity to lecture us on what is right and what is wrong.'
Daniel's face was turning red.
'You see this?' Sayf al-Tha'r raised his free hand to the scar on his forehead. 'This was done to me in a police cell. The interrogators kicked me so hard I was blinded for three days. My crime? I'd spoken out on behalf of the millions in this country who live in squalor and hopelessness. Do you complain about that? Do you complain that half the world lives in poverty so that a privileged few can fritter away their lives in pointless luxury? No. Like all your kind you are selective in your outrage, condemning only what it is convenient for you to condemn. To the rest you turn a blind eye.'
He squeezed for a moment longer and then released his grip. Daniel collapsed. 'You're mad,' he said, choking. 'You're a mad fanatic.'
The man's breathing seemed hardly to have changed.
'Very possibly,' he replied calmly. 'The question, however, is why. You dismiss me and my followers as extremists and fanatics, but never once do you look behind those words. Try to understand the forces that have created us.'
He stood over Daniel, his black robes seeming to merge with the darkness so that all that was visible was his face, floating disembodied above them.
'I have known horrors, Dr Lacage,' he said, his voice sunk almost to a whisper. 'Men beaten and crippled in the torture cells of the state. People so hungry they are reduced to eating scraps out of ga
rbage cans. Children gang-raped because they have the misfortune to be a distant relative of someone whose views do not coincide with the ideas of those in power. These are the things that make men mad. These are the things you should be condemning.'
'And you think the answer's to go around shooting tourists?' coughed Daniel.
Sayf al-Tha'r smiled faintly, eyes glowing. 'The answer? No, I don't think it's the answer. We merely make a point.'
'What possible point does it make killing innocent people!'
The man raised his hands, the fingers long and thin, skeletal almost. 'That we are no longer prepared to have you meddling in our affairs. Propping up a godless regime because it happens to be in your best political interests. Using our country as a playground while we, the people of that country, remain hungry and oppressed and abused.' He stared at Daniel, the scar tissue on his forehead gleaming red in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp.
'I often wonder how you in the West would react if the tables were turned. If it was your children who were begging in the streets while we Egyptians rode around flaunting our wealth and insulting your customs. If half your national treasures had been stripped out and carried off to Egyptian museums. If a crime such as Danishaway had been committed on your soil, against your people, by Egyptian overlords. It would be an interesting experiment. It might help you to understand a little of the anger we feel.'
Still his voice was low and calm, although flecks of froth had started to bubble at the corners of his mouth.
'Do you know,' he went on, 'that when Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun he signed a contract with The Times of London stating that they and only they could report what was in that tomb? In order to find out about a discovery in our own land, which belonged to us, one of our kings, we Egyptians had to turn to an English newspaper.'
'That was eighty years ago,' coughed Daniel, shaking his head. 'It's different now.'
'No, it is not different! The attitudes are the same. The assumption that as Egyptians and Moslems we are somehow less civilized, less able to order our own affairs. That you can treat us how you want. These things persist. And those of us who try to question them are dismissed as madmen.'
Daniel stared up at him but said nothing.
'You see,' said Sayf al-Tha'r, 'you have no response to that. And, indeed, there is no response. Other than to beg forgiveness for the way this country and its people have been treated. You have pillaged our heritage, sucked out our blood, taken but not given in return. And now the time has come to redress the balance. As it says in the Holy Koran, "You have received but the recompense of what you have earned."'
His shadow bulged on the canvas behind him, black and shapeless and menacing. From outside came the sounds of excavating, but in the tent the air was silent and still, as though they were part of a different world. There was a pause. Then, slowly, Tara came to her feet.
'I don't know much about Egypt,' she said, standing in front of the man, looking into his eyes, 'but I do know that my father, whose death is on your hands, loved this country and its people and its heritage. Loved them so much more than you do. Look at what you're doing here. Destroying. My father would never have done that. He wanted to protect the past. You just want to sell it to the highest bidder. It's you who's the hypocrite.'
The man's mouth tightened and for a moment she thought he was going to hit her. His hands, however, remained at his sides.
'I derive no pleasure from plundering the army like this, Miss Mullray. Sometimes it is necessary to do unpleasant things to achieve a higher purpose. If part of our heritage must be sacrificed to free us from oppression, then so be it. My conscience is clear.'
For a moment he held her eyes and then slowly dropped to his haunches in front of the lamp. 'I do the will of God. And God knows that. God is with me.'
He reached out and placed his hand on the scalding metal. He neither blinked nor grimaced. A faint smell of burning flesh drifted upwards to Tara's nostrils. She thought she was going to gag.
'Do not underestimate the strength of our belief, Miss Mullray. That is why each of my followers takes the mark of faith on his forehead. To show the depth of his conviction. Our adherence is unwavering. We suffer no doubts.'
He remained like that for what seemed an age, staring up at Tara, hand burning, face expressionless, and then stood again, his palm scalded a livid reddish-white.
'You asked why I came here, Dr Lacage. It was not, as you suggested, to look at you, my prisoners. Rather it was to let you, my prisoners, look at me. To look, and to understand.' He stared at them for a moment and then moved towards the entrance.
Daniel called after him, 'It'll never work, you know. Digging up the army like this and selling it off. You'll only be able to uncover a fraction of what's down there. And then someone else will come along and find the rest and the value of what you've got will drop through the floor. It's pointless unless you've got the whole thing.'
Sayf al-Tha'r turned. He was smiling. 'We have our plans, Dr Lacage. God has given us the army and God will ensure that we alone reap its benefits.'
He nodded at them and melted into the night.
SIWA OASIS
Just as Khalifa was pulling onto the forecourt of Siwa's only garage, a power cut suddenly plunged the entire settlement into darkness.
'If you want petrol you'll have to wait,' said the garage attendant. 'The pumps won't work till the electricity comes back on.'
'How long?'
The man shrugged. 'Maybe five minutes. Maybe five hours. It'll come back when it does. Once we had to wait two days.'
'I hope it's sooner than that.'
'Insha-Allah,' said the man.
Khalifa parked at the edge of the forecourt and got out. The air was chilly and, reaching back into the car, he removed his jacket and put it on. A donkey-cart rattled past with three women in the back, their shawls pulled low around their heads to hide their faces, giving them a lumpen, shapeless look, like melted waxworks. There was a roar as a generator coughed into life.
He walked back and forth for a while, stretching the stiffness from his legs, and then, lighting a cigarette, crossed to a refreshment stall on the edge of the main square and bought a glass of tea. There was a wooden bench nearby and he went and sat on it, pulling Abdul's mobile phone from his jacket and keying in Hosni's number. His brother-in-law answered on the fourth ring.
'Hosni, it's Yusuf.'
There was a sharp intake of breath.
'What the hell's going on, Yusuf? We've had the security service round looking for you. Where are you?'
'Bahariya,' lied Khalifa.
'Bahariya! What are you doing there?'
'Police business. I can't give any details.'
'They came to my office, Yusuf! Do you understand? The security service came to my office. Have you any idea what that could do to business? Edible oils is a small world. Rumours get around.'
'I'm sorry, Hosni.'
'If they come back, I'm going to have to tell them where you are. We're at a very delicate stage with this new sesame oil project. I can't let something like this put a spanner in the works.'
'I understand, Hosni. If you have to tell them, you have to tell them. Is Zenab there?'
'Yes, she is. Just turned up on our doorstep this morning. We need to talk, Yusuf. When you get back. Man to man. There are things that need to be said.'
'OK, OK. When I get back. Just put Zenab on, will you?'
There was muttering, then a clunk and the sound of receding feet. A moment later Zenab came on the line.
